Healthy Living

Addiction can take such a huge toll on our livelihood, and, over time, it’s quite possible that a person can become disconnected from their mind, body and/or spirit. When one area of emphasis is disconnected, the other parts begin to feel “out of whack” too - and it’s during these times that individuals often find themselves stuck in a negative cycle. Even when addiction isn’t present, self-compassion can be incredibly hard to achieve, whether it’s due to the lingering pain from trauma or the aftermath of mean comments people have said, difficult circumstances or mental illness.  If you’re currently on the road to addiction recovery, you’ll find that self-compassion is crucial for a healthy, well-rounded approach to life. Without it, we’re likely to criticize ourselves for the smallest mistakes - and, since we’re only human, it’s a natural part of life that we need to learn to accept. Even the most shameful moments of life can be tended to with self-compassion, and this is what helps us to grow and become better people over time.

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health explains that massage therapy is: “...Used to help manage a health condition or enhance wellness. It involves manipulating the soft tissues of the body.” Massage therapy can become an excellent addition to addiction recovery, as the mind, body and spirit work to heal and rejuvenate from the negative aftermath of substance abuse. One type of massage therapy in particular - Thai massage - can be incredibly relaxing in more ways than one. It’s a bit different from traditional massage therapy approaches in that it involves the client lying on a padded mat on the floor, in which a masseuse guides and manipulates a person’s body into yoga positions and stretches.  Medical News Today, a website that publishes articles related to a variety of health conditions, notes that Thai massage can yield a number of benefits, such as:

Day-to-day life can bring up different thoughts, feelings, situations, and emotions, and how we navigate these moments can say a lot about how we lead our lives. When addiction is involved, it’s easy to rely on alcohol or drugs to numb bad feelings - but in recovery, it’s all about developing the proper tools and building a network of support for working through bad days in healthy, productive ways. Whether you’ve recently begun your addiction recovery journey or you’ve been working at it for quite some time, it’s time to assess how you currently handle bad days:

When our everyday lives become flooded with worries, responsibilities, and a host of other experiences, it becomes easier than ever to put our health on the back-burner. Why wouldn’t it be? After all, everything else seems to feel more important, to take greater precedence than our own mental/physical/spiritual health. What often happens in these moments, however, is we begin doing things that, rather than contributing positively to our wellbeing, detract from it - and before we know it, we’re engulfed in a lot of unhealthy patterns of behavior. Addiction is just one of many factors that can worsen our health all around - but even if you’ve had trouble making the time for yourself before, you can still change your routines to get back on track. First and foremost, you have to remember that the excuses you make can severely damage your abilities to take care of yourself in ways that are needed; the following are the most common excuses we make to neglect ourselves of healthy food, proper sleep and exercise, positive relationships and more:

In a sense, we all develop some form of dependency at one point or another; whether we expect it or not, we become entrenched in a relationship, a career, shopping, eating, or a different hobby – and if we’re not careful, we may find ourselves planning our lives around these events in an unhealthy way. We all must rely on things like our relationships or our career, but in healthy ways; it becomes dangerous when our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors transform because of them. The first step to developing a new lifestyle after drug dependency is to remember that it will feel uncomfortable for a little while, and that patience is key. In 2016, The Health Journals stated, “The good news is that the brain can be made to re-adapt to life without addiction. But coming clean can require extraordinary patience and perseverance…as well as support, accountability and medical intervention for the person addicted.” Luckily, there are so many holistic recovery-related activities that a person can fill their time with to help them get readjusted. Volunteering, picking up a new hobby, meditation, yoga, art therapy, attending support groups and spending time with a healthy friend or family member are a few great ways to developing a fresh lifestyle based on sobriety. Secondly, continuously work on building an internal (mind) script of positivity and inspiration. A few years ago, writer Katherine Davis shared her sobriety experience via the Huffington Post; she explained that despite the emotional rollercoaster she went through, she tried to stay focused on what her goals and dreams were. She asked herself, “What steps can you take today to accomplish these?”  Thinking positively and reassuring yourself that you are doing exactly what you need to be doing can serve as a beautiful foundation for a strong recovery. Lastly, understand and accept your mistakes. Part of being human is making mistakes and, as we make them, we grow and become better. Recognize that mistakes are inevitable, but as long as we take it day by day, that’s what matters. If you’re ready to begin your holistic journey, speak with a professional from Avalon Malibu today.

Mindfulness is the practice of staying grounded, aware of one’s surroundings and what they are doing, and not feeling overwhelmed or over-reactive about what’s happening in their environment. Mindfulness can help greatly with addiction recovery because it opens mental space for the development of tools to be used in stressful situations and to better work through challenging thoughts and feelings. For example, mindfulness has been used in cognitive-behavioral therapy and has helped individuals with anger, anxiety and circumstances that could increase a person’s risk for relapse.

Motivational enhancement therapy (MET) is a therapy approach that helps people who are feeling ambivalent about moving forward in treatment find some solidarity and explore their options. This approach is generally for people who aren’t quite sure of the benefits for why they should move forward – but the underlying mechanism behind MET is the aim to spark internal motivation for change. There are several components to this approach, but, when done successfully, a person can become more engaged with their program because they’ve personally chosen to move forward rather than feeling coerced into it.  The American Counseling Association (ACA) expresses that MET is not only brief, but it’s not grounded in direct persuasion. People who are unsure of whether or not to move forward in recovery likely won’t benefit from hearing straight-forward, persuasive statements – rather, they’d like to weigh out their options and consider the costs and benefits of each decision they could choose. In many instances, MET is considered based on a partnership between the client and therapist; by working together and engaging in discussions, clients can fully consider their options while not feeling threatened.

Nutrition and exercise are two of the most commonly neglected aspects of health when substance abuse is involved. A few simple drinks after work hours can translate into daily binge drinking, and occasional drug use with friends can eventually turn into nightly intoxication sessions. It feels harmless at the time, but these behaviors form into a dangerous habit that becomes an addiction – and along with addiction comes with crucial areas of our lives that tend to be pushed to the side. If you’re in recovery for addiction, you can probably admit that it’s been more difficult for you to get proper exercise and to eat healthy when substance abuse required so much time and effort. It’s harder to go shopping for healthy, nutritious foods and to schedule in time each week to exercise when our brain has become altered to crave substances constantly. If you feel like you’ve got a long way to go, don’t be disheartened – treatment is just as much about getting your physical health back on track as it is treating the addiction itself.

We all have them – the days when it feels like the world is falling apart, like we don’t get anything done, like nobody believes in us and we wish we could simply go back to bed. Bad days are unpredictable, and, if we don’t watch closely, we could find ourselves falling into a “rut” in recovery. There will always be ups and downs, especially as we’re learning to find our balance – but part of healing is discovering healthy techniques and coping mechanisms for when these bad days arise. Writer Joni Edelman, a woman who works on her mental health, shared with the Huffington Post in 2017 her experience with having bad days. She listed some basic questions that she asks herself to promote positive coping skills on these days, such as:

It’s a common experience here within the United States; individuals meet up on the weekend, or after work, and begin drinking until they’re belligerently intoxicated. College students experiment with blackouts at parties, and many highschools have their first drink at the age of 14-15. Our society holds such a heavy stigma on addiction, yet social norms seem to perpetuate alcohol use in an almost positive light. In 2016, writer Layla Bryndzia shared her views on The Odyssey, a website that publishes information related to home, communities and more. She explained, “For most college students, a typical weekend starts with happy hour on Friday, going out later that night, getting completely sloshed, waking up on Saturday with a killer hangover, then doing it all over again the next weekend.” We always read the signs that warn us of drinking and driving, drinking and violence and more – yet why do so many Americans seem to not take this notion seriously? In 2015, Adweek highlighted the fact that alcohol ads have increased by 400% over the years – and while that certainly perpetuates the ease of buying alcohol over drinking a glass of water, it could very well be the fact that Americans are stressed – and they’re looking for ways to numb the pain.  The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) explains that there are a number of stressors that are placing Americans at higher risk for alcohol intoxication; a new job, a death in the family, moving cross-country, breaking up, getting married and more are all incredibly major life events that can bring out nerves and the urge to drink. In addition to this, daily stressors and living with a mental illness can make it hard to manage symptoms – and in these cases, Americans may bypass drinking “responsibly” in favor of drinking to cope.

It’s been estimated that around 20.4% of Americans (50 million people) struggle with chronic pain each year. Disease is often the underlying cause of chronic pain, but other instances may be from genetics, injury and accident, etc. If you’ve been dealing with chronic pain for quite some time, you may have found that you’ve tried everything to help ease the discomfort – sleeping medication, opioids, alcohol and other drugs may only numb the pain for so long, but it doesn’t address the long-term implications associated with it. Relaxation techniques have been proven to be useful alternatives against medicine, and can help you treat the core of chronic pain through mind, body and spirit. Erica Jacques, a board-certified occupational therapist, explained to Very Well Mind, a website that publishes information related to psychological conditions, several ways to address chronic pain at its core:

Whether it occurred before addiction began or once it’d already developed, damaged relationships can impact the way a person views themselves and their life. Friend and family relationships can involve ups and downs over time, especially as different situations arise. Unfortunately, families can harbor toxic relationships which only perpetuate miscommunication and unhealthy dynamics; in many other cases, relationships can be broken because of the changes that are displayed in a person when active addiction is involved. If you’ve lost important relationships throughout your life – which many people have – it can feel nerve-wracking to start over in building new relationships. We can’t always get by on surface level conversations – to build a truly meaningful life, we have to develop a strong support system which we can lean on in both times of celebration and need.